Blog Stats
- 2,783,242 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- Anonymous on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- notabilia on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- Santi Tafarella on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- prismpromise on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- notabilia on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- Santi Tafarella on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- notabilia on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- Santi Tafarella on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- notabilia on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- VFYW Contest: Readers On The Trail - Sensemaking Today on Charles Darwin and Politics: Very Gradual Change We Can Believe In?
- barneybettyhill on Carl Sagan Looks Like an Alien and Wants Us to Believe That There are No Aliens Visiting Earth. Shouldn’t That Tell You Something?
- Glenn Hall on “We Rule You, We Fool You”: Classic 1911 Poster Depicting Capitalism Titled “Pyramid of Capitalist System”
- The Journey Starts Now: How To Discover What Motivates Us - Yellow Parachute Learning Partners on Human Beings are “Purpose Maximizers, Not Profit Maximizers”
- Anonymous on Walt Whitman: “To be indeed a God!”
- Commercial Project 1 from start to finish – Meg Dobson-Armstrong Art on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
Top Posts
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Ludwig Wittgenstein for Beginners
- Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- Adam Smith and Capitalism for Beginners
- What is an Etiological Narrative? And Might Confusion About Its Nature Be the Source for Fundamentalist Religion?
- "We Rule You, We Fool You": Classic 1911 Poster Depicting Capitalism Titled "Pyramid of Capitalist System"
- James Baldwin on Death
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: A German Jewish Girl Who Was Part of the Kindertransport (1939)
-
Recent Posts
Recent Haiku Tweets
- RT @RachelBitecofer: 1. Want to thank @DanielNewman for using his HUGE platform for this work. I want to clarify what this is. In the voter… 2 weeks ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Tell me again about how old and feeble Joe Biden is??? twitter.com/ProjectLincoln… 1 month ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Remember when you had a chance to choose country over party and you chose party @SenatorCollins? Well, @ProjectLincol… 2 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Trump cares more about dead traitors than live patriots. RT this @votevets ad & tell your followers https://t.co/OD5Z… 2 months ago
- RT @ltgrusselhonore: Make a note, We need to forbid police and federal agents from using military uniforms . The camo uniforms are meant to… 2 months ago
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Theorizing Desire
If you think about it, we respond to whatever arises into consciousness with desire, aversion, or neutrality. And the things that appear to consciousness are always in flux: they arise, they ripen, they decline from attention and disappear. Then others … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Buddhism, desire, Nietzsche, philosophy, psychology, suffering
1 Comment
Life
The eagle flies, the crows perch. The eagle craps on the crows’ perch.
A Pretty Good Reason to Think Flu Shots are Good for You
Your health insurance company likes them. If a health insurance executive compares the data of two populations–say, 100,000 people who have had flu shots and 100,000 people who haven’t–she finds something significant: the rates of illness and mortality in the … Continue reading
Jacques Lacan in the Mirror: the Real v. the Imaginary and Symbolic
The Real as illustrated in courtly love. In his essay, “Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing” (1994) cultural critic Slavoj Zizek (b. 1949) presents courtly love—knight-Lady romance as ritualized in the European Middle Ages—through a Lacanian lens (Jacques Lacan, the … Continue reading
A Checklist for Critical Thinking
A lot of us are brought under the spell of false beliefs because we can tell a good story about how they might be true, they are consistent with logic (they are logically possible), and we want to be believe them. We’re quite good, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, critical thinking, philosophy, psychology, reason
Leave a comment
David Chalmers on Consciousness
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, consciousness, mind, philosophy, science
1 Comment
Hegel for Beginners
Outer v. inner direction. The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) had a decisive influence on Karl Marx, and he continues to exert influence on intellectual thought today. For this reason, it’s good to know the gist of Hegel’s theorizing … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged art, atheism, Christianity, Hegel, literature, marx, philosophy, Politics
Leave a comment
The Zen of Woody Allen
From a recent interview: It’s just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we don’t have to really face up to the fact that, you know, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, existentialism, God, philosophy, woody allen, Zen
6 Comments
A Pretty Awesome Disruption of Business as Usual
Speaking truth to power and standing up for the stigmatized and persecuted.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged dignity, freedom, gay equality, gay rights, Russia, women's rights
Leave a comment
Thomas Jefferson’s Weltanschauung Meets a New Claim: Premise Checking as a Tool for Thinking
A Cautionary Tale. As a Southerner living in Virginia in the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson once encountered a jaw-dropping claim, and it came from two eyewitnesses. They said they had seen rocks fall from the sky. Rocks from the sky. They even … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, critical thinking, philosophy, premises, psychology, reason, Thomas Jefferson
Leave a comment
What Would Homer Say? Model Writers at Your Shoulder as a Tool for Writing Improvement
Imitation and emulation. The ancient Greek teacher Longinus is among the first persons to address what would become a recurrent theme in the history of rhetoric and literary criticism: the sublime (elevated emotion; ecstasy). His reflections on the sublime can … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Homer, literature, longinus, poetry, reading, the sublime, writing
3 Comments
Read
At The Daily Beast, academics and writers were asked to name “one book that [college] students shouldn’t escape campus without having read.” MIT professor and Pulitzer Prize winner, Junot Diaz, picked Toni Morrison’s Beloved because it “stabs straight at the heart … Continue reading
Hot Potato
The dookie left the doggie; the doggie left the dookie. For me.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Religious Fascism
This is being reported by the AP today: Mustafa Hegazy, a political adviser to interim President Adly Mansour, told a press conference Saturday that […] Egyptians took to the streets on June 30 – the day that led to Morsi’s ouster … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged alexandria, atheism, Christianity, Egypt, fascism, fundamentalism, Islam, religion, Thomas Jefferson
9 Comments
Thoreau Cabins on Wheels: The Fiat 500 Series and The Spark
I am soooo in love with the Fiat 500 series microcars, and am tempted to buy one whenever I see them on the road (which is frequently; microcars are everywhere in California). But I already have a small car and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, cars, ecology, Fiat, gas prices, life, thoreau
Leave a comment
Dog Plays By Itself
Pleasure in concentration and pursuit. And notice the constant tail wagging. On your way to dusty death (Heidegger called us “beings unto death”), do you have a satisfying mental and physical practice that keeps you occupied? Aside from giving you … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged death, dogs, existentialism, games, intelligence, life, philosophy, play, psychology, vanity
2 Comments
Can Republicans Get More Than 60% of the White Vote?
Political scientist Ruy Teixeira is skeptical of the “maximize the white vote” strategy that some Republicans are advocating for the next couple of election cycles: White voters are likely to become less, not more, conservative over time, presenting a huge obstacle … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, class, evolution, hillary clinton, race, Republicans
Leave a comment
Bill de Blasio for NY Mayor
A great ad made by his son, Dante. Bill de Blasio, who is white, has a black wife and two children by her. His wife, before she married him, was a lesbian. How cool is that? __________ Here’s a bit from … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Bill de Blasio, family, hillary clinton, marriage, new york, Politics
Leave a comment
Something Good About Christian Belief
One good thing about God belief of the Christian variety (if you can swing it) is that it inoculates you from other forms of irrationality. A nonbeliever in God is more prone to, say, succumbing to the delusions of Marxism … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, Christianity, critical thinking, God, Jesus, philosophy, psychology, reason
Leave a comment
A Reason to Believe Evolution is True
Goose bumps. Here’s Harvard’s Steven Pinker: Our own bodies are riddled with quirks that no competent engineer would have planned but that disclose a history of trial-and-error tinkering: a retina installed backward, a seminal duct that hooks over the ureter like a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, biology, Darwin, evolution, goose bumps, science
10 Comments
